


The Golden Cage

by MonarqueNocturne



Category: Naruto
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:46:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6807475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonarqueNocturne/pseuds/MonarqueNocturne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neji thought he liked being alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Golden Cage

The mansion, at night, was very quiet.

At day, there was barely more noise.

The Hyuuga were expected, at all time, to be careful not to make noise. A Hyuuga spoke quietly. Children were not heard, not until they were asked a question. Running was forbidden if it wasn’t for training. Crying was frowned upon. Laughing out loud was equally disregarded. Emotional outbursts were seen as obscene, and affection was rarely shown. Hyuuga were master of their emotions, of their bodies. Therefore, they made the perfect ninjas.

Neji, raised between silent walls, learned early to keep everything in. Every noise, every complaint. He was proud of what he was. He was proud to be part of this elite family, of his control over himself. He feigned that he did not care for being hugged. He lifted his chin and kept himself from crying when somebody said something that hurt him.

Neji liked, at night, to slip out of his room and to walk around the compound, enjoying the quiet of the night. He was a solitary soul from birth, encouraged this way in the years after, and people and proximity made him suffer. He felt best when he was alone, like this.

Sometimes, Neji’s parents or - more often - a lesser member of the clan would bring him outside for a meeting or, rarely, a family outing. The outside world seemed scary and loud to little Neji, who was used to the whispers of silk on polished wood and to quiet conversations. People outside made faces, talked with their hands, their entire body - they screamed, they shouted, they ran, they laughed without covering their mouth. It was alien and intimidating to the boy. Always, he felt safer when he was brought back between the walls.

School, when it finally happened, was a shock. There, he was left to himself, in this incredibly messy and noisy environment, without skills to communicate with the rest of the children. Not that he wanted to: their way of speaking gave him headaches and the sheer quantity of movement and noise emanating from them made him dizzy. He wished for calm, and for quiet, and for peace.

At the same time, he observed the other children. Neji was a bright child, so he didn’t miss the way they casually touched each other, pushing or hugging or clapping hands, and he didn’t miss the way their parents touched them, petting their hair and taking their hand. Neji’s parents didn’t have the time to come and get him directly at school, of course. They had important duties to see to. So a clan member would be send for him, sometime one of his aunts, other times an uncle or cousin, and never did they take his small hand.

The first day of school, when he came back home, he was so distressed that he hid up a tree in the garden and wept tears of frustration.

Neji adapted, though. He found out that if he stayed silent, the rest of the children would leave him in peace. He saw that bullies didn’t go after anybody stronger than themselves, so he made sure they always saw that he was. He worked hard, for the honour of his clan, for the rare smiles of approval he knew he could get from his family. He studied more than the rest of his class, and trained twice as much as most of them.

When the rest of the parents arrived at the gate, when school finished, he observed that some parents smiled at their children for nothing. Just like that. Because they wanted to, Neji supposed.

The first friend Neji made was another boy in his class. He was timid and liked to read better than to run at recess, which please Neji enormously. They liked to talk quietly together and to exchange notes in class. But when Neji spoke of his friend at dinner table, one night, and that his parents discovered that the boy was not from another Clan, they asked him if it wouldn’t be better for him to find other friends. They didn’t expressly ask Neji to stop seeing the boy, but Neji heard the message loud and clear. Things were said quietly, in the mansion. He never sat with the boy again.

Afterwards Neji tried to make friends with other Clan children, but most of them were too loud for him to like them. After a few failure, Neji acquired a reputation of an unpleasant child and of a loner. He didn’t mind. He liked being alone. He liked it.

By the time he was twelve and, finally, ready to graduate from the Academy, Neji’s reputation had shifted to the one of some sort of Ice Prince. A result of teenage hormones, Neji understood. Still, the result was the same.

By the time he was twelve, also, things had happened. His father had been killed, Neji’s warmth for his cousin Hinata had merged into hate, and the walls around Neji had become so high that he couldn’t see the top.

It was fine. He liked being on his own.

His teammates were loud and exuberant. It was exhausting, especially since the boy, Lee, had decided that Neji was his rival. Neji didn’t care about Lee. He didn’t want that loud annoyance in his personal space.

His teacher was even worst than his teammates. He was utterly ridiculous. He started shouting at random times and liked to hug, which made Neji deeply embarrassed. He even burst crying on regular basis, something Neji had never, ever seen from an adult. It made him cringe.

Just endure it, he told himself, day after day. Just endure it until you make chunin. Then, you won’t need these idiots anymore. Just one more day. Then you’ll make the Clan proud.

Every time he thought that sentence, his hand tried to fly to his protector headband and what it concealed, but every time, he stopped himself. And, every time, something tightened in his stomach.

Today, it had been exactly three months that Neji had been made genin. His uncle had deemed it time for him to bring his team to his home to meet them, and Neji had bowed to the demand, all the while panicking internally.

His team?

In the Hyuuga compound?

Neji could already feel the disaster happening. Thus, he tried to, at least, prepare his teammates. He couldn’t do much about his teacher. After all, he couldn’t think of a universe where talking about etiquette with Might Gai would amount to anything.

‘All right. Listen to me. If you are to come for dinner, you need to follow these rules, or else you will insult my family and my Clan. Do you understand?’

His teammates had nodded at him, wide-eyed. Their expression had grown alarmed as Neji had detailed the rules. Don’t laugh. Don’t talk loudly. Don’t run. Never speak without being asked a question, unless it’s to somebody of lower rank. Don’t look into the Clan’s Head’s eyes before he speaks to you. Exploration of the compound is forbidden. Be careful about the utensil you use, because they are not used for the same plates, and don’t drink big gulps, only small ones. Be careful not to spill anything. That is a great offense to the host. Don’t talk about anything upsetting. Don’t use familiar speech. Don’t use the word youthful. No, really, don’t use the word youthful. Actually, Lee, don’t speak at all.

When he was finished, his teammates looked horrified. ‘How the hell do you want us to do all that, Neji?’ asked Tenten, who wasn’t afraid to state her opinion.

‘I concur, my rival!’ boomed Lee.

‘Just follow my lead,’ Neji sighed. Doomed. They were doomed.

 

*

 

He had been right.

Gai-sensei had been surprisingly good with etiquette, but a few blunders from his teammates had precipitated the atmosphere into something completely frozen. Tension had run high by the end of the meal, and Neji and his teammates had been dismissed coldly by Hiashi-sama, who excused himself to talk with Gai-sempai.

So Neji, at a lost to what to do with his mortified teammates, had decided to bring them to his room. There was only so much he could do to minimize the damage they had made by coming to the compound.

Lee and Tenten were strangely silent as Neji glided through the silent corridors, feeling strangely embarrassed at having to share his living space with outsiders. He had never brought anybody his age in his home before, after all. He wondered what they thought about it.

Nothing good, probably, after the disastrous dinner.

Neji’s room was stark. There was his bed, on the ground in a corner, and his dresser. The rest of the space was occupied by a training matt and by various bookshelves, all painstakingly kept into order. For the first time in his life, as his teammates looked around with strange expressions on their face, Neji felt it lacking. Lacking with what, he couldn’t tell, but still. Lacking.

‘You can sit,’ Neji said after sliding the door close.

They all took place on the training matt, as there wasn’t really any other space to sit than the bed or his desk chair, and Neji wasn’t ready to share those spaces. Silence fell over the small group, until Tenten broke it.

‘What,’ she said, ‘was that?’

She looked upset. Neji, looking resolutely at her, answered shortly: ‘Dinner.’ He was as tense as a board.

‘Dinner?’ She repeated. ‘A bloody bad show, if you want my opinion. Is your family always so rude?’

If it was possible, Neji stiffened even more.

‘Tenten, be kind,’ Lee said with none of his usual cheer. ‘It’s not Neji’s fault.’

Tenten frowned and answered harshly. ‘But did you see that? Did you see how they spoke to us? Hell, how they acted towards _Neji_?’

Was she upset for him? There was no reason to be upset for him, Neji thought, muscles clenched. Everything was all right with his family. This was how things were. This was how things were supposed to be.

He had a headache.

‘Stop it, you two,’ he said tensely. ‘You did your best. My Uncle can be...’ He chose his words carefully. ‘...demanding.’

Tenten exploded. ‘Demanding? Demanding! He didn’t speak a word to us! He only critiqued you! He made these condescending noises and faces at us all through the meal! Demanding! That’s not demanding, that’s, that’s -’, she searched her words for a second, ‘demeaning! Cruel!’

There was a moment of shocked silence before Lee added quietly: ‘It was, Neji.’

It was not, the Hyuuga thought in protest, but another part of him, the Neji part, the part who remembered the children who had been kissed by their parents and who had wondered what he was doing wrong not to get that kind of treatment for himself, cracked. Just for a moment. So Neji dropped his head between his hand, pressing his palm against his hurting forehead, and said, very quietly:

‘I’m so tired.’

It reduced his teammates to silence. He wondered what he looked like, him, the proud Hyuuga, bowing his head this way. He wondered why this was affecting him so much. He was a master of controlling his emotions. He had erected walls. He…

He felt so humiliated. But not by his teammates.

He felt humiliated because of his family.

Had it only taken three months to erode him? Three months of good cheer, of hugs, of trust and of praise - three months of offered friendship, of shared accomplishments and of companionship.

Didn’t he like being alone?

_Liar. You never liked it._

_It hurts less when you think that way, that’s all._

 

 

He sat with his teammates for a long while, knees touching, in silence. When Gai-sensei came to collect them, strangely subdued himself, Neji felt his shame roar in his stomach. But then his teacher put his large hand on his shoulder and wished him goodnight with a comforting smile, avoiding mention of the dinner and telling him that they’d see each other the next morning for training, and Neji felt a little better.

That night he walked around the silent compound, after a quiet discussion with his uncle about the evening that left him feeling torn into shreds, and he reflected that his life didn’t limit itself to the walls of the Clan, now.

He remembered the boy he had befriended, when he was still very small.

He hadn’t had much of a choice, back then.

Now he did.

So he chose.


End file.
